From the article, I am taking it he had a home business either buying, moding and re-selling the consoles, or possibly some business where people send him their console, and for a fee (parts, labor, shipping), he mods them.

So if you mod your own console or mod someone else's for free it's ok?

Well hopefully the judge that will reside over his proceedings WILL NOT BE Sonia Sotomayor, or Judy Getner.
well like it matters, all the judges are paid off by hollywood and music industries and copyright (copywrong!) overlords and lawyers get paid by the hour while working these cases! the one that prosecuted joel tuanembuam got paid over $200/hour...something is wrong with this picture.

The guy was clearly modifying these consoles specifically to enable piracy. I'm quite sure he would have been fine if he was just installing the Homebrew Channel on Wiis, or XBMC on old X-Boxes for people. I'd bet that he was making a good chunk of change selling burned games as well. In which case: GOOD. This kind of business is highly irresponsible and damaging to the game industry as a whole. Modding a few friends' systems for novelty is one thing, but profiting by enabling piracy for the masses is just plain stupid, and the guy deserves a hefty fine at the VERY least. People like this guy are making games more expensive for ME to buy, and that is incredibly irritating.

At the very, very least, if people are going to pirate, they should need to have the skills and time to do it on their own. At least piracy would be limited to hardcore tinkerers, hackers, and people with way too much time on their hands, instead of reaching out into the masses of folks who barely even know how to run their damned microwave, but don't want to shell out $40-60 for games that cost, in some cases, millions to make.

That said, I've modified nearly a dozen Wiis for friends (for FREE... modding is not a legitimate business). Most of them get the Homebrew Channel only, but there are a select few who I've given the USB Launcher, knowing full well that they can be trusted to try out the games, and then BUY them if they're any good, deleting those that they find unworthy. Nobody gets ripped off, and if anything, the developers/publishers make a little extra money from games that these folks would have otherwise most likely never even tried, let alone BUY, if not for the convenience of the USB loader. And for the record, I'm not the least bit worried about the police knocking down my door. That's ludicrous.

Modding your console - LEGAL
Modding a friend's console - LEGAL
Modding any console - LEGAL
Playing PIRATED GAMES THAT YOU DO NOT OWN - ILLEGAL
Playing PIRATED GAMES THAT YOU DO OWN - LEGAL

The fact of the matter is, modding is as legal as it gets, there's no fucking gray area it's LEGAL. You don't buy your console with a little contract that says "I'll never open and modify this". The worst they can do is null your warranty and decline FIXING it, that's ALL THEY CAN DO.

However, the second you make even a penny or profit off of modifying consoles for pirating is when the problem comes in. A lot of people do this (at least 10 people in Miami where I live) so it's safe to say that they won't catch all or even a majority of the people, this was done as a scare tactic, throw a number of years out there that you'll go to jail and anyone gets scared.